by Gary Pritts | Sep 11, 2014 | General News, HIPAA
Recently, 6,500 patients of Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, California were notified of a breach of their protected health information. A former employee (on his last day of employment in August) removed the medical records of the patients and brought them to...
by Gary Pritts | Sep 11, 2014 | General News, HIPAA
The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced yet another delay in the start of the long-awaited HIPAA Audit Program. This time, a technology upgrade is to blame. In June, we blogged about the OCR’s plan for Phase 2 of its audit program, which was projected to...
by Gary Pritts | Sep 4, 2014 | General News, HIPAA
Several celebrities had their privacy compromised this week when nude photos they had uploaded to Apple’s iCloud were stolen by hackers and shared on the Internet. On Tuesday, Apple said that the theft of the photos was due to “very targeted attacks” on the...
by Gary Pritts | Aug 25, 2014 | General News, HIPAA
HIPAA Security’s 42 requirements, many of which are merely one sentence in length, understandably result in many questions for organizations seeking to comply. To resolve some of this ambiguity, the HHS Office of Civil Rights, in April 2009, issued guidance to...
by Gary Pritts | Aug 24, 2014 | General News, HIPAA
The HIPAA Security Rule include two separate implementation specifications involving encryption. The first is contained at 45 CFR 164.312(a)(2)(iv): “Encryption and decryption (Addressable). Implement a mechanism to encrypt and decrypt electronic protected...
by Gary Pritts | Aug 23, 2014 | General News, HIPAA
Community Health Systems announced on Monday that outside hackers gained access to their network and stole the non-medical, personal information of 4.5 million patients. The data included names, addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers—all...
by Gary Pritts | Aug 21, 2014 | General News, HIPAA
Since the initial report of the Community Health Solutions breach, in which attackers hacked into the CHS network to gain personal data of a whopping 4.5 million patients, details of the hack are emerging. According to security firm TrustedSec, owned by David Kennedy,...
by Gary Pritts | Aug 19, 2014 | HIPAA
We’ve blogged previously about a nasty piece of ransomware called CryptoLocker, which gives its victims a difficult choice: Either pay the “ransom” ($400, although other variants may have different fees) to re-gain access to your files or lose your valuable data...
by Gary Pritts | Aug 14, 2014 | HIPAA
An August 5th report from Hold Security, a private security firm in Milwaukee, alleged that a Russian gang of hackers stole the personal data of more than half a billion people. Experts at Hold Security estimate that 420,000 web and FTP sites were accessed by the...
by Gary Pritts | Jul 31, 2014 | HIPAA
A former employee of an East Texas Hospital is facing criminal charges for violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, more commonly known as HIPAA. On July 3, 2014, the US Department of Justice announced that charges would be filed against...
